Lately, we’ve spotted some interesting comments on the internet like this:-

Question is, if you are a new believer in Jesus or are curious about Christianity, what can you do if there isn’t a church or you need a friend to help and pray with you?

We have included an instant message app with the xbible project called Pidgin.

This is a terrific instant messager app that lets you use MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and many other accounts simultaneously.

I’d love to use to disciple those who have newly discovered or interested in Christianity, but I already have the xbible project, our real job and studying to do sadly!

Note, you can multiple different accounts, but as for having a real identity and a pretend identity, we don’t know if this is safe to use without the risk of revealing your real name to the wrong person. This would need careful testing to be used in ministry in a hostile place.

An article in January 29 issue of Sharq newspaper lists the new bizarre conditions for Internet cafe owners and their establishments (roughly translated):

Married, and at least 30 years old.

Having ICDL or equivalent license.

Having surveillance cameras installed.

The establishment needs to be at the side of the streets.

The establishment should not be inside buildings.

The establishment should not be near a girls’ school.

The establishment should have fully transparent glass doors through which the inside is clearly visible.

Putting any kind of posters or blinds that blocks the view of the interior from outside is forbidden.

Men and women, even related, cannot sit side by side.

Foreign names should not be used for the establishment.

Having fire extinguishers and first aid kits is mandatory.

The time of entrance and departure for each user should be registered.

Users should have valid identification. The identity of each user (including their national ID numbers) needs to be registered. This information needs to be kept for at least six months

We think a packaged kit on a USB drive containing text bibles and audio bibles and tools to keep it discretely hidden and access the internet unrestricted in places like Iran is sorely needed. We hope xbible can be a blessing to Iranian people….

In some countries internet has monitored or censored content in countries like Syria, Iran, China, North Korea etc.

Some people in these countries can used specialized tools to circumvent censorship of things the government don’t want you to see. In one case, people in Iran aren’t allowed to use Facebook.

We like western rock music, we like middle eastern music too. And we like it when bands play outside of their normal traditional audience base. U2 have done concerts in Israel and Lebanon.

Which why this is sad….

This fan forum for U2 isn’t produced by the band themselves, but a independent fan group.

We can’t go onto this forum, as we are currently in Jerusalem, Israel. The authors of the site have blocked anyone from using this forum (we have never even registered) with an Israeli IP address.

This is where this tool gets around this nicely….

No need to change any of the settings, once its running, my IP address can’t be traced…

Everything now working…..

This blog and the ethos of xBible isn’t political. We would like to see Jews and Arabs in the holy land be able to dialogue about rock music. Blockage of this site isn’t done by Israel, its by the site owners with grudge against the country we are in. 😦 Israel doesn’t have any blocked web content.

We don’t currently have any users we can try using the internet in Tehran, Damascus, Gaza, Saana, etc who can test any possible blocked sites at the moment, but we certainly want to get xBible out there, to enable to get the full experience of the internet the way it was meant to be, as its likely Christian content on the web may not be visible for residents of these countries.

UltraSurf and another app called FreeGate (intended for Chinese) will be included on xBible for users to be free of government or ISP blocked content, or blocked country-specific IPs of the web page’s authors.

Did you think this was Microsoft Word? You could be forgiven for thinking so, it looks very similar to Word 2000 or 2003!!

This is AbiWord which is a free open source word processor application we have included on the xBible. The layout of the icons for all the functions is close enough to Microsoft Word 2003 without having to pay for a copy or use a illegally obtained copy.

Here, our computer has Microsoft Word 2010, and with this and many other traditional apps on your computer, it tends to show what documents which have been recently worked on, if someone has logged onto the same profile as you, making it not secure, with a public or shared computer.

AbiWord is perfect for writing letters for home or business, you can also use this for bible notes or anything.

‘Unmount’ your xBible USB flash drive when you have finished and you can carry your word processor onto another computer.

Reminder: we don’t write these applications as we just found these goodies to bundle them into the xBible project, if you need technical help with AbiWord, here is the support page: http://www.abisource.com/